The Big Lebowski Star David Huddleston Dies At 85

The Associated Press reports that David Huddleston, a character actor best known for playing the blustery title character in the cult movie The Big Lebowski (1998), has died at age 85, according to his wife, Sarah Koeppe. Koeppe, Huddleston's wife of 32 years, said that he passed away from advanced heart and kidney disease on Tuesday in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Huddleston was born in 1930 and raised in Villamont, Virginia, before serving as an aircraft engine mechanic in the Air Force. He then went to New York to study acting on the G.I. Bill, he once told the Santa Fe New Mexican. Though Huddleston had many roles under his belt, his arguably most famous role was late in his 55-year career as the eccentric millionaire who bears the same name as Jeff Bridges' character. Other notable performances by Huddleston include Blazing Saddles, The West Wing, The Producers, and Gilmore Girls.

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One of Huddleston's very last onscreen appearances was in 2010 on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia as Danny Devito's business partner. According to Koeppe, he considered his most important role to be Benjamin Franklin in the Broadway production 1776 (1997).

"Things were not important to [Huddleston]—people were," Koeppe told the Los Angeles Times. "He loved entertaining and would rather sit down and talk with someone over dinner."